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The “Pyramid” Project (2014-2016). Improving visitor reception

In late June 2014, the Musée du Louvre embarked on what will be its biggest construction project in the coming few years. Inaugurated in 1989, I.M. Pei’s Pyramid was originally designed to receive 4.5 million visitors. Twenty years later, annual museum attendance has nearly reached the 10 million mark, with 70% of all visitors coming from abroad. An insufficient carrying capacity results in considerable inconvenience, such as long waiting lines and noise pollution, and makes it difficult for visitors to find their bearings.
As part of a wider effort to promote the Louvre’s collections, the Pyramid Project is the first phase of a large-scale project aiming to put the visitor back at the center of the museum and its permanent collections.
The entrances and reception areas under the Pyramid will be reorganized, moving logistical functions such as ticket sales, cloakrooms and restrooms to the Pyramid’s outermost perimeter in order to enhance visitor experience. With this project, conceived by museum staff and architectural firm Search, the iconic Hall Napoléon will revert back to its original function as visit planning area, regaining its grandeur and serenity without losing its architectural integrity.

The Springtime of the Renaissance. Sculpture and the Arts in Florence, 1400-1460

Following upon major exhibitions devoted to masters of the High Renaissance—Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael—The Springtime of the Renaissance deals with the genesis of this major artistic and cultural movement, which first arose in Florence in the early years of the fifteenth century. Sculpture, an essential aspect of this rebirth, is the central focus of this exhibition. Some 140 works are presented, including several monumental ones, grouped into ten thematic sections. In addition to sculptures, the exhibition also features paintings, drawings, manuscripts, silver and gold pieces, and tin-glazed earthenware (majolicas).

The Saint Anne, Leonardo da Vinci’s Ultimate Masterpiece

The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne is one of Leonardo da Vinci’s most ambitious compositions. Celebrated already by those having visited the Florentine master’s studio in the early stages of the painting’s conception, this work was the culmination of a long process occupying the artist during the last twenty years of his life. To this day, a number of questions remain unanswered, particularly as to the origin of the commission, how the painting evolved, and its early history. Recently, several historical and scientific discoveries have provided important clues, although without resolving all of the doubts surrounding this work.

The Saga of the Thracian Kings. Archaeological Discoveries in Bulgaria

Home to Orpheus and various legendary kings featured in Homer, Thrace is still a little-known region whose splendors are now being slowly revealed thanks to recent archaeological research.
During the classical period there emerged a new regional power, the Odrysian kingdom, on the edges of the Greek world and the Persian Empire. Numerous graves of kings and aristocrats uncovered in recent decades have yielded ceramic, bronze, and golden furnishings that testify to the wealth of Thrace. Located between the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea, Thrace was stimulated by its multifarious contacts with surrounding civilizations. This exhibition will explore the reality and complexity of the Odrysian kingdom through artifacts from Bulgarian museums.

The Louvre invites Robert Wilson. Living Rooms

Some forty years after he first created a sensation on the French theater scene with Deafman Glance, Robert Wilson is the Louvre’s latest guest curator. No mere retrospective or remembrance, this event marks an unprecedented collaboration between the world’s quintessential museum and the artist who, in the words of Louis Aragon, is “what we, from whom Surrealism was born, dreamed would come after and go beyond us.”

The Louvre invites J. M. G. Le Clézio – Museums are Worlds

The Louvre Museum’s guest of honor this season, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, will be offering his own fresh perspective on the Louvre’s collections, through a multi-disciplinary program of events in the museum’s galleries and its auditorium. Museums are Worlds.

The Louvre Introduces Admission with a Single Ticket

Over the past eighteen months, the Louvre has been implementing a new strategy to promote a more comprehensive and cohesive cultural offering, and in particular to create stronger links between temporary exhibitions and permanent collections.
In line with this strategy, as of July 1, 2015 the Louvre will adopt a simplified price list*, already in use in a number of national and international museums, with a single admission ticket giving access to collections and exhibitions. Free access conditions previously restricted to the permanent collections will be extended to exhibitions.

The Louvre - Nintendo 3DS audio guide

As part of a new partnership with Nintendo, the Louvre museum has launched an unusual tour guide using Nintendo 3DSTM. Constantly looking for ways to stimulate and entertain its 8.9 million annual visitors, the Louvre remains committed to its digital ventures: interactive and original, the Louvre - Nintendo 3DS audio guide offers museum visitors the best possible experience.

The Galerie du Temps at the Louvre-Lens. A unique presentation of 205 works of art

Several months in advance of the planned opening of the Louvre - Lens on December 4, 2012, the Committee for Loans and Deposits of the Musées de France has approved the initial selection of 205 works that will be presented in the museum’s Galerie du Temps, home to a semi-permanent exhibition unlike any other ever put on public view before.

Poussin and God

In spring 2015 the Musée du Louvre is showcasing the art of the seventeenth century with three exhibitions: two at the Louvre itself (“Poussin and God” and “Making Sacred Images”), the third, “Velázquez,” at the Grand Palais.

Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665) is the greatest French painter of the seventeenth century, considered by some as the greatest of all time. However, the artist, who was described during his lifetime as the “French Raphael,” is less well known today than Watteau, Delacroix, Monet, or Cézanne.
This exhibition, marking the 350th anniversary of the artist’s death, aims to introduce visitors to a little-known but particularly moving aspect of the art of this great French master: his religious painting.

New galleries for the Department of Islamic Art

The creation of a new wing dedicated to Islamic art at the Louvre represents a decisive phase in the architectural history of the palace and in the development of the museum. The design and installation of these new galleries is the museum’s single largest expansion project since I. M. Pei created the now-famous Pyramid twenty years ago. The new department will soon be home to one of the most exceptional collections of Islamic art in the world, owing to its geographic diversity, the historical periods covered, and the wide variety of materials and techniques represented.

New Frontier: American Art Enters the Louvre

The musée du Louvre, the High Museum of Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and the Terra Foundation for American Art have announced the launch of a four-year collaboration devoted to American art. The first installation will explore the rise of American landscape painting through the works of Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand.

New donation campaign for the restoration of the Winged Victory of Samothrace

The great conservation project for the Winged Victory of Samothrace begins in September 2013. The Louvre launches a new campaign “Tous mécènes !” (All Donors!) on September 3, day on which the monument will be removed from the public eye. The goal will be to raise one million euros before the end of the year to help the Museum restore in entirety the monument’s splendour.

New Donation Campaign for the Acquisition of a “Work of Major Heritage Value”

In the wake of the Tous mécènes ! (Become a patron!) donation campaigns launched by the museum in 2010 for a painting by Cranach, in 2011 for the restoration of two treasures from Cairo, in 2012 for the acquisition of two magnificent ivory statuettes thought lost, and in 2013 for the restoration of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, the Louvre is once again appealing to the generosity of the general public to raise one million euros to add to its national collection with the purchase of the famous Teschen Table, a masterpiece of 18th-century decorative arts and monument commemorating a key moment in European history.

Medieval Morocco. An empire from Africa to Spain

This major exhibition, presented by the Louvre in association with the FNM, Morocco’s national museum foundation, encourages a reassessment of the period from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, when the civilization of Western Islam was at the height of its glory, as much in terms of its artistic production as its place in history. A succession of dynasties - Almoravid, Almohad and Marinid - fashioned a cultural and political space centered on Morocco, gaining control of an empire stretching from sub-Saharan Africa to Andalusian Spain. This empire’s influence, unifying for the first time Islamic communities in the West, was felt as far away as the Near East. Bringing together nearly 300 works, the exhibition includes many of the most beautiful examples of this period’s achievements in areas such as architectural decoration, textiles, ceramics and calligraphy, illustrating this long and complex history, both essential to understanding contemporary Morocco and the very source of its modernity.